Alpine Bio, Maker of Nobell Foods, Secures 10th U.S. Patent

SAN FRANCISCO — Alpine Bio, San Francisco-based biology design company and maker of Nobell Foods, an animal-free dairy brand, announced a newly issued patent, Recombinant Milk Proteins and Food Compositions Comprising the Same.

This milestone represents a significant stride in making animal-free dairy more accessible and appealing to consumers, the company said. Alpine Bio's team of scientists have overcome several technical challenges to recombinantly express casein in plants, the main protein in milk that is responsible for giving cheese its melt and stretch. Nobell Foods has been on a mission to unlock a new age of animal-free products where taste, quality and affordability are widely accessible, the company said. With further advances in Alpine Bio's end-to-end platform for protein production, Nobell Foods said it is even closer to bringing animal-free cheese to the world.

"Today, we celebrate the breakthroughs our company has made over the last few years to reimagine the future of food in a way that positively impacts the climate, agriculture and our food system at large," said Magi Richani, Alpine Bio founder and CEO. "This milestone not only reflects our strides in science-backed technology, but also brings us closer to delivering a sustainable and delicious product to market."

This 10th patent, which is focused on dairy food compositions containing plant-expressed recombinant casein proteins, showcases Alpine Bio's advancements in replicating the production of traditional animal-based dairy products in a plant system.

"Cheese is one of the most loved foods in the modern diet, and yet it is one of the worst offenders in terms of its climate impact," said Chris Rivest, Breakthrough Energy Ventures. “Magi and her team have developed a transformative way to produce dairy-identical proteins in plants to create stretchy, gooey, delicious cheese that consumers love, but made from plants — it is simply amazing."

The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. Patent No. 11,952,606 on April 9, protecting Alpine Bio's milk protein production technology. This proprietary technology enables high and consistent production of milk proteins in plants, outperforming first-generation expression of casein and making the resulting animal-free products more cost-competitive against traditional dairy products, Alpine Bio said.